Knife Skills and Safety: Another essential tip for success in the kitchen

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that 99% of all recipes require the use of a good, sharp kitchen knife for preparation, and like any other sharp tool proper safety and skills are a necessity to avoid injury. In this post I'll be going over essential tips, tricks and techniques to help improve your knife skills in the kitchen. These, along with time management I talked about in my previous post will bring you most of the way to a solid start in the kitchen. 

Now on to the real meat and potatoes of this post (forgive the pun). This part may be second nature to some, but might be a welcome lesson to others, and this is how to hold a knife. Many people grew up seeing family members or friends using a kitchen knife with what we lovingly call the "death grip" on the handle. This is holding the handle of the knife almost perpendicular to the blade itself and holding it with almost a GI Joe kung fu grip. While this old school method of using a knife may work for some it's an almost guaranteed way to find yourself with a sore wrist or in the worst case with a nick or two on your fingers. 

There are many methods of holding a knife as shown by the chat below, but without going into too much detail on the exact style of knife you're using we'll just stick to the pinch grip today.

 

The chart gives a basic idea on how to use the pinch grip on a knife, but it does fall a little short on how exactly to use this grip to maximum effectiveness. In the pinch grip you'll want to place the handle of the knife in your palm and use your thumb and index fingers to pinch the upper portion or "spine" of the knife. Once you have a comfortable pinch on the knife you'll want to wrap your remaining three fingers around the handle of the knife giving you an ergonomic and slip-free grip.

Without trying to sound like a dry and boring culinary school instructor I'll move right along to the best way to actually use the average chef's knife. The most common and effective method is called the rocking method as pictured in the GIF below. 

You'll see that in this cutting method the fore end of the knife is almost always resting on the cutting board, and the mid-section of the knife known as the "belly" is rocking forward and back, up and down to do the actual chopping. This method along with using the "claw" grip on whatever you may be cutting greatly decreases the chances of wrist and hand fatigue as well as any accidental cuts to your hands and fingers. 

What I've said here is by no means and exhaustive list, and there have been whole books dedicated just to the different types of knife cuts and skills (believe me I've read some of them), but these couple of simple tips with get you well on your way to success in the kitchen.